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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues we're recording on a Monday but we're going to be broadcasting on Tuesday. So if you're listening to it now you're probably not listening to it live. But if you happen to have read our blog post, you can call in your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 This is the last cooking issues before the big museum fundraiser event that's going on at Del Posto next weekend on Sunday. You can still go and buy your tickets at Mofaz MLFA D that's Museum of food and drink mo fed dot Eventbrite b r i t e.com. That's mo fed mufa.eventbrite.com. Anyway, we are privileged today to have a special Colin guest Harold McGee is going to be the ultimate Master Blaster of the science of deliciousness is going to be joining us via phone. Unfortunately, we're working very hard on the museum event and so Natasha cannot be with us today in the studio because in fact she is delivering produce to WD 50 Because while they do frame is going to be working on the dish today for you know do some preparatory work today for his dish. So known as stash but we do have Harold Harold you there I am David Good morning. Good morning. How are you doing?

I'm doing okay.

How's the West Coast? Right?

Yeah. It's okay. This last week has been really rainy and cold. today. It was sunny to begin with, but the sun has disappeared. So it looks like it may be another grim week.

I'd love it then. You know, I hate the sunshine.

Well, but you know, 50 degrees. You want a little? A few rays?

Yeah. All right. All right. Yes. If it's gonna be 50 out might as well be a little bit a little bit sign. Okay, so you want to start hitting these questions. We have a bunch of email questions in. Sure. Before before we start, someone wrote in one of the questions. They want to know the secret of Thai iced tea, the mysterious spices in Thai iced tea. And I have to say, I don't know, because I'm not a I don't really, I don't drink it. Do you drink it?

I'm afraid I haven't for a long time I did a couple times years ago. And yeah, I just can't pull back the the flavors.

Yeah. And so I mean, I think that, you know, this is the kind of question Aaron wrote in with it. I think this is the kind of question. You know, I would hate to give just a research dancer off of the web of what belongs in it, because I don't have the actual taste memory in my head to know whether it's right or not. It's not something I've worked on because it's not something that it's just not Something that I've focused on ever but you know, I'm sure that we can find the answer. I mean, if you you know, if you see PIM when you're out there or something like that, we can probably get the answer of what the what the stuff is. But I would hate to. I would hate to guess on something like that.

Ya know, same here.

All right, Aaron. So I apologize. But I will not be able to answer that question this week. Because I just don't want to give an answer. That's BS. I'd rather not give a B I'd rather give no answer than a BS answer. Right.

Yeah. And also, I mean, for Aaron to do his own research, shaped him would be a good place to start. David Thompson's book on Thai cooking is seems to be the standard. So there are a couple of you know, authorities you can start with and then kind of move on from there.

Yeah, I'm sure Thompson has a recipe for it in the book, I have it at home. I just haven't been home to look at it to get the to get the recipe out of it. But his book is, you know, as far as I can tell, quite well respected. I know that he's done all of his research on the on kind of the old on the old manuscripts. He has a thorough knowledge of current Thai cooking in historical Thai cooking, so

and in fact, I think he has a new book, this last year, street, cooking street type, which might be an even better place to look.

Yeah. And that's where we'd probably go anyway, if we were just gonna get it wouldn't be our answer. It would be his answer. Anyway. So yeah. Check out PIMS PIMS. site now it's going to knock out one question right away. And Harold, you can chime in cuz you've had some of this stuff. But Rick writes in and says that his roommate Zacks advisor just purchased a new rotary evaporator for the lab and has agreed to let them use it for a few days for food purposes. And they want to take maximum advantage of everything that they can do in it. And, you know, they want to build their own but they're not ready for quite yet. And so they want to know what we should do like, he just wants to distill basically as much as possible. He wants to get the flavors of Falernum into it, maybe he wants to do. Martell Cordon Bleu is ripe for something. I've actually wrote a VAT and Harold you've had it. We did a event with Mandy FTL where we wrote off half Martel with frankincense I don't know whether you like frankincense but Martel does wrote about quite well. He wants to do something with maybe absent any of these things. Oak dirt, grass, cigars, peppers, like the heel on show and stuff like that. What are they wrote about stuff? Do you like Herald?

Pretty much everything you've done. Thanks. I love what you do with havin euros for example. That's that's an amazing experience to be able to separate the heat from the aroma.

Right? Yeah, I've done dried and and if you ever had any of the dried pepper, I prefer the fresh pepper ones because I like the floral note that they have more.

Yeah. And then I mean, the dishes that I've had that never really stuck in my head. In fact, the very first one is probably still the the one I remember best is the the Roca family did a an oyster in a jelly that was flavored with birth. So one of the ideas on the list here was along with oak and grass and cigars was dirt. And dirt works. Although you and I had it I think when the rocas were visiting the FCI. And it wasn't the same.

They didn't give it to me. He wouldn't give he said he was gonna give it to me. And he didn't probably because it wasn't the same maybe.

Yeah, so in fact, I had it and it wasn't as good. And I think with something a flavoring that you wrote a Vapp that isn't a standard food ingredient. It's more of an environmental aroma. I think you have to just nail the concentration just right. Otherwise it tastes like dirt like the forest.

Well and also they were using a water base distillate and the water base. distillates tend not to be fixed very well. So if they're opening and closing the bottle, and it has to be transported. I mean, I don't know what kind of freshness problem they have with that just in terms of loss of the volatiles but I mean, it's a huge problem with with non alcoholic wrote of APT products is that they just tend to the aromas. So fugitive, they tend to just go, you know, yeah. Could that have been it? Was it overly dirty? Or was it just not not as just unbalanced? What was it?

Well, it's a good question. I was I was guessing that it was the concentration because it didn't seem to be just stronger. But it could have been stronger because you know, the wrong things were popping out. And so it could have been that it was just, you know, he had to prepare the distillate. But remembering it with him, and who knows how many days old it was, and that may have been the problem,

right? Well, okay, if you have a roll of that for just a couple of days, I would obviously I would recommend trying something that you could do no other way. And that would be some sort of fresh herbs, right, some sort of fresh herbs that you distill. And I would drink that right away, make it very, very fresh, very, you know, summery spring like, that's like, you know, the one that we do with the Thai basil and cilantro and the cucumber and the orange, right, something something like that with those flavors. Because you can't recreate that with normal distillation. Because the temperature is too high, it's going to alter the flavor of the herbs. So I would definitely do that, I would then do something like a pepper, I would choose a fresh one that's floral kind of red. So you get the floral notes. So you can see what it's like that the spice doesn't go through. I would then do horseradish, because horseradish makes it intensely, intensely pungent, because the punch in principle of horseradish does distill. And that's going to last you a long time. So you'll have that for you know, a good long time, then then just start doing wacky things like do some liquors. You know, try some of the culinary preps like dirt or earth, just remember you're going to have to some of the things that are more aromatic, like horseradish or, or habaneros. Or whatever you do, you're going to have to totally break down and clean all the grease out of the road of app joints before you run the next batch because you'll get contaminated. There's also if you've never run one unless your roommate knows how to run it really well or the or the you know, the professor knows how to run it really well. There is a learning curve associated with it. Don't set it to the automatic distillation sit there and actually constantly force the distillation so that you're getting the fastest rate possible. Set your chiller as low as it can possibly go. For alcohol, you're going to want to set it around minus 20 Celsius we now use a cold finger distillation distilled with liquid nitrogen. And we can do water base distillation that way, but have some fun with it. Tell us how it worked out. Right? It's good advice right, Harold?

Yeah, yeah. It's always fun stuff.

I've never done a cigar I've done smoky stuff. I've never done a cigar anyway. And unsmoked cigar, you think he means or like the ashes of cigar?

No. Must be on the smoked. I mean, the fermented leaves. That's the that would be really interesting.

Right? Right. But it's not characteristically what you think of as cigar the smoke. It's different. It's a completely different.

But yeah, it's the cigar box smell rather than the Yeah, the smoke room, which, which I think is a good thing.

Yeah. All right. Here's a question for you, Harold. Does using reduced fat milk lead to a higher way higher way production in when you're making yogurt, like if you're gonna make it?

Well, it shouldn't. Because if you're using a reduced fat milk, usually reduced fat milk is supplemented with waste solids, which include lactic globulin, which is a whey protein, not the casein proteins that that curdled. But whey protein that's soluble, but when you when you heat the milk, which you should do at 180 for 30 minutes, before you make the yogurt, that protein denatures and helps give the yogurt body and and water retaining ability. And so a reduced fat milk is going to have more of that protein and it should in fact, release less way rather than more.

And the heating than is necessary to alter the whey proteins that is a necessary step because that was one of the questions before.

Yeah, in fact, if you, if you just make the yogurt without the preheating step, you'll of course still get curdled milk, but it's not going to have the kind of sick, pleasing consistency that you really want.

There you have it. Alright. And then as a separate question, what makes a marinade effective? obvious factors are time. But what about oils, ratios of oils, acids or other liquids or the consistency of the herbs and other aromatics? Joshua would like to know what do you think?

Well, different ingredients are going to provide different things and consistency for example, you're going to get a lot more direct contact with the meat that you're marinating if the material has been finely common nuded. So if it's, if it's ground or very, very finely minced and instead of chopped or whole. If it's spices, then you know some of the aromas are gonna get out into the liquid and we'll get into the into the meat that way. But there's not much that happens beyond the surface unless you're actually going to leave it in there for days. So that's something to keep in mind.

Or if you vacuum bag. Yeah, yeah, orange bright orange card. Obviously, if you discard it or inject, then you can have this stuff happen very quickly. I mean, I've noticed, okay, so a lot of people, they'll do a buttermilk marinade, which, you know, chicken is fairly friable along the fibres, you can get some penetration. And if you vacuum bag it, you especially can, when you cook it that way, I find sometimes it gets like, acidic Brian's, for me, if you're not going to take the next step and overcook the meat in a traditional way, if you're going to do some beadwork on it, it just is too mushy to me, you lose too much structure. What do you think?

Yeah, no, I agree. That's, that's something you see, you know, if you if you do a typical wine marinade and overdo it, then what you end up with is the surface layer that you can just scrape off because the the meat has has denatured so much, and you don't want that. So using one of those methods that you mentioned, in order to speed it up, if you really want some penetration. And otherwise, you know, put put the flavors in the sauce, right? I

mean, I tend to when I'm marinate, I tend to be right, exactly. I put acidic flavors and things like that in the sauce with rare exceptions. And I put the functional ingredients for the water holding capacity for proteins, salts and sugars and things like that in the marinade or Brian. I mean, that's typically what I do.

Yeah, because salts are going to get into the meat. Flavor molecules are much bigger salt and salt breaks down into ions. They're they're tiny little particles that can move in and out of the meat pretty easily. But flavor molecules are not going to do the same thing.

Caleb has a question about smoking sausage, he purchased some cherry Chipotle pork sausage. That's a good cherry Chipotle has got a link to it there. Right? And he's pretty excited about it. Which simply smoking the sausage as he would for a brisket or pork ribs? Would that be a valid and delicious way to cook it? Well, I'll see why not? Do you have any thoughts on that?

No. Sounds good to me. And you know, get some cherry wood.

The trick with the smoking, right? I mean, the trick with any sort of sausage cookery is that when you're cooking off a sausage, typically what happens is is you overcooked the hell out of the sausage, and you're relying on the high fat content of the sausage, and hopefully the crafts, you know, the crafts, person who made it, making sure that there's enough fat in there such that it stays juicy even when it's overcooked, right. So if you can, I would try to control the smoking, such that the sausage itself doesn't get much above 140 when you're doing it, and I think then you're going to have like a really, you know, fantastic product when we're cooking a sausage is what we'll typically do is waterbath them at 140, which is 60 and Celsius land, and then and then grill them or fry them or pan them to get that nice, you know, kind of crusty outside to it. So I think a lot of that is going to be about the temperature control.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's that's one of the most common sins in the kitchen is over cooking sausages and losing all the, you know, all that craftsmanship that goes into mixing the fat with the meat just goes away the moment that you overcook it to the point that all the juices are squeezed out.

Yeah, what's the point? Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that's good. It's good, but Right. Yeah, but just because it's a sausage doesn't mean you should mistreat it. You know what I mean? It's so easy not to mystery, especially if you have a circulator on board you know, you can just makes life so easy anyway. All right. So we're gonna go to our first commercial break if anyone should be around listening and it's remember we're recording on Monday, not Tuesday, calling your questions to 71849721287184972128 cooking issues.

Watching you following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network, every Sunday at 4:30pm Tune into burning down the house. Architecture is the laser focus of burning down the house a weekly discourse on all things built, destroyed, admired and despised you each week Curtis Dewayne your host invites a posse of authors, critics, builders, designers, and other architecture themes to reflect on various topics related to perhaps the most functional of all art forms. Again, that's every Sunday at 4:30pm on the heritage Radio Network.

Hello and welcome back to Cooking issues call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 Curtis Wayne hosted the show not to be confused with Wayne Curtis noted rum scholar weird. Harold, you still with us? Yes, indeed. Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. So where were we? We had a question. I will read it to you from Colin gore. He often asked us questions, but this one is specifically for you. Harold, the sweet potato was a delectable amalgam of starch, pectin, sugars and other components. This I know, this mixed composition of sweet potato guts makes it a very versatile tuber. What I'm fuzzy on is why adding some acid let's say vinegar to hot sweet potato puree improves the film forming properties of the puree upon drying. Without the vinegar the film is glassy and brittle. But with the vinegar addition, the final film was essentially a kick ass, sweet potato fruit roll up, I saw a recipe for ABI lotto which calls for the addition of some vinegar to the simmering potato starch solution. So I assume that the vinegar modifies interacts with the starch in the sweet potato and other sweet potato components are just along for the ride. What is your hunch on what is being modified? And we'll hit that first. By the way, for those of you who don't know, the avocado is that I think it's how it's pronounced. I don't know those are those potato starch sheets that you can wrap things in you can you can buy them, I think I forget where they're made, or they made in Japan or Spain. I don't know, I don't really use them. But that's what they are. Any any thoughts on this?

You know, this is really interesting, I need to play with this. Mike, my guess is that he's right that it's an effect on the starch, you're getting some limited hydrolysis. And that kind of plasticizers the starch so that when you're dried all the way down, you know, you've got some, you've got more small sugar molecules and small portions, small pieces of starch, that helps soften the film. So that it can't form as as brittle as she does, he describes and probably the same thing is going on with the sweet potato. Normally starch, sorry, acidity. Makes vegetable matter of various kinds harder by limiting the degree to which the the cell wall components can be removed. But in this case, it's the opposite effect. And because he's seen it in a pure starch system, my guess is that he's right, that that's what's going

on. Right. But it seems strange that you would have hydrolysis with just a little bit of acid, you know. And conversely, though, it's not like a protein where you're shifting the, you know, the isoelectric point by adding a little by shifting the pH a little bit and then radically changing its properties. It seems odd, maybe it's adding a lot of acid, I don't know, what do you think?

Yeah, well, that's it, I don't get an idea here for how much acid is being added. But you know, it doesn't take a whole lot to. To change the hydrolysis, right? You'll get you'll get hydrolysis of starch in in neutral water, just from the water itself. So it might be that just shifting the pH a little bit can can make a significant difference. So

it's similar to adding a little bit of acid to a sugar boil. When you're boiling it, it's going to increase the breakdown. If the longer you boil it, the higher the breakdown.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And yeah, that's the other thing that's missing here is any sense of timing, you know, how long it takes whether this happens kind of immediately, or whether you have to kind of incubate it to let it happen,

right? I don't know, does any break down to the starch into shorter train chain, you know, sugars and dextrans. And things like that is going to plasticize the feed someone, right? Yeah, yeah. Adding maltodextrin. But maybe, you know, this is easier, I guess.

Yeah, that's true. If you if you add small, small molecules as another ingredient, then you could get the same effect without without the acidity and without the flavor of vinegar. And that might be an interesting alternative.

And vinegar is also an interesting choice. Because although that's for instance, what I use in my candy boils and it's traditional. It's a volatile acid. So why, you know, it'd be it's interesting that you would choose a volatile acid maybe as a self limiting measure. I don't know. Yeah, interesting. Because it also have to I've never done a test of a boiling vinegar testing the pH before and after and seeing how much of the vinegar The acidity is reduced by the boiling once you read correct for the liquid loss.

Yeah, I've played around with that a little bit, not not really systematically just kind of, you know, with my left hand while I was doing something else just to just out of curiosity, and it seems as though the pH anyway is relatively constant, you know, as you as you boil it down, boil a 5% solution down, which surprised me

because it should get more acidic, right?

You think so, but but you as you as you say, you are boiling off acetic acid as well as water as you boil.

So at boil it, basically you lost vinegar, almost the same rate as water. Right, right. Interesting. I mean, I know for a fact that when you spray dry vinegar, you get the taste of vinegar, but not the acidity. So you need to augment the acidity with a separate acid when you're making let's say, vinegar, potato chips and you're and you're sprinkling vinegar powder, which is spray dried with a maltodextrin carrier when you do that you have to add a supplementary acidity to get the acidity back to where you want it. So me it's it's volatile enough and then Colin second question because we have we have pumped your your awesome walnuts on the on the show. So here's a question. Is there anywhere on the East Coast that a fellow can find walnuts low in tannins and astringency? Is it merely a matter of harvesting walnuts in an immature state? On scent. Giovanni's day as many neutrino recipes call for I did not know that. I don't know what species grow in Italy, where those recipes originate. And we have black walnuts locally. I'm interested in finding nearby sweet sweet nuts as yours are likely off limits. I'd be delighted if you could enlighten us further on the matter. I would like to have the talk on walnuts.

I don't think there's anything off limits about California walnuts, I think they'd love to sell more of them. The problem was finding a source on the east coast of the good stuff, because you know that it ranges from good to not so good. And you can tell just by looking at the nuts how stringent they're going to be the lighter the seed coat, the milder they're going to be. And of course, you want to make sure by looking at them as well that they're fresh, because that's going to be the other problem. You know, if they've been shipped across the country, who knows what kind of shape they're in once they get there. Immature walnuts are wonderful, but they're nothing like the walnuts we're talking about here. They're they're wonderful, crunchy. They're not that astringent. But boy, you have to wear gloves in order to deal with them

right in heck out of your hands. Yeah,

they do have that the fruits do do give you that wonderful kind of aroma. That's nothing like a standard dried walnut aroma. But yeah, it's a completely different experience and a mess.

Right? Well, I try it well, as a kid I used to play around with this stuff. That stuff does not come out of your hands just because we had a bunch of walnut trees around but the Okay, so at your house, we tried the red walnuts, which people are pushing, but those weren't the miracle nuts. They were nice. They were good. The red walnuts maybe you could say something about those, but it was these very low stringency. Why don't they just why don't they just ship only that like what like, is it more difficult to produce? Is it a tree by tree variation the same way it is with acorns? You know, some acorns are more bitter than others. And you just have to know the tree. I mean, I don't really know much about walnut propagation is walnut clonal This is done by graft. Is it done by seed? Is it just lucky shots like why isn't every as a separate ancillary question like Why have California almonds so low in oil? Why why did they grow them so low in oil, but literally, like couldn't? Could they make all the walnuts is delicious and they just don't?

I think so. I think it's, for the most part a matter of variety. And you know, there's a particular guy I go to the farmers market out here, who has several different matches. He's got red walnuts, he's got really light skinned walnuts and he's got darker ones. And they're priced accordingly. The red ones are more expensive than the light ones which are more expensive than the dark ones. And you know you just you can take your pick.

We like we like the light ones best though, right?

Yeah, cuz they have just been the nicest flavor the nicest nutty flavor. I think the reason though, the red ones are awfully good. The red ones have instead of having tannins in the, the brown seed coat they have anthocyanins the same pigments that give color to lots of fruits and vegetables, grapes, things like that. They're they're very delicious too, and they're not nearly as tannic as as standard walnuts. I think the reason you didn't like them as much as that that batch of red ones wasn't as fresh as my batch of pale

ones. They're just as warm, nutty? Yeah,

yeah. No, they're they're delicious. All right. Well,

I stand corrected then on on on the red nuts. But what's this farmers name? Do you know?

I don't, I don't I know it's on his truck. And I'm just not able to pull it into memory at the moment.

Is that the ferry market and Ferry Terminal Market?

No, he's actually at the Alamanni farmers market

will go look for the sweet nuts at Alamanni farmers market. But why can't Why is just freshness it can't be like why why do they only why do they even grow the darker skin? Is it just easier?

Yeah, I think it's. And it may be that it's just a matter of, you know, farmers covering their beds if they just move or grow the same variety. And there happens to be a problem with that variety. It's the old monoculture problem. And also, I'm just not exactly sure which variety is which here. It may be that this is a new one or it's an old one and it's not as productive or there might be all kinds of reasons for the predominance of the darker more tannic nuts

right I mean, I really don't know much about walnut culture at all. I don't know how long it takes for a tree to come into bearing or mean I know they bear for a long time but I don't know kind of what the farm cycle is on a walnut tree. Why wire a wire almonds from California so low and oil do they do that on purpose?

It's a good question. You and I tried to figure that went out wire. Almonds from California does not more delicious.

And no offense California.

They couldn't I mean, they're talking talk about tannic tough, thick skins. There, there's no mistaking California almonds. And I don't know it. Again, it may be a matter of agronomic yield rather than quality. I'll look into that. I'll ask some questions,

because I would pay more for more. In fact, we do we pay more for European almonds that are higher in oil and more delicious. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, all right. Aaron writes in from home and he says he's going to be carrying some bacon next week and he intends to use Michael Romans charcuterie recipe for it which is a foreign 50 grams of salt to 225 grams of sugar to 50 grams pink salt pink salt, I'm assuming he's using the insecure number one which is nitrite not a nitrate. You want to make sure that you know which pink salt you're dealing with. And he's going to coat the pork belly with some of this mixture and leave it in the fridge or freezer for some number of days before roasting it until it reaches an internal temperature 65 etc etc. Kosher salt is hard to come by where I live is sea salt like Maldon a think he means Malden it says more than here but mountains is suitable substitute suitable but extremely expensive. Yeah. I mean, the main thing you're gonna want to do is I mean I don't really think it makes that much of a difference in that people have all these questions about whether or not certain salts are bad for for curing it's true that sea salts probably have some sort of extra minerals in them but I don't know what they add to the brining process and pickles it's extremely important not to use certain salts because they can just color the pickled I don't know that it's a big deal and you know Brian for a bacon to you.

I don't think so it I know that it is an issue in the curing of fish white fish like cod because the the calcium and magnesium salts can end up causing the cod to yellow. But with a bacon. That's not an issue

right ham guys swear that the type of salt that they use makes a difference. In fact, I'm wearing a fish field farms country ham hat right now. They say it makes a difference, but I don't really know what the basis is. I could go research I have Fidel Tollers book on dry cured meat products. I can look into the effect of the different salt components but I am sure that you will be fine. If your wallet allows you to use Malden then, then then go ahead. Oh, maybe they meant more than sea salt and sea salt is going to work fine. I would like to try a bacon cure with maple syrup for a friend. Should I just add some maple syrup to the freezer bag. I'm planning on doing this by until it's pretty evenly covered. Does this affect the curing process in any way that I should know? Well? You're gonna be doing a wet cure in that and you would substitute maple syrup for the water and sugar and then put salt into the maple syrup. I assume right Harold?

That sounds right to me. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Number three was How long should I leave the bacon to cure? I'm guessing the amount of time will be a function of the size, shape weight of the meat I am curing Can you give me some guidelines? I don't have any in my head. I believe that the charcuterie book Michael Romans book has some guidelines in it. You can accelerate the cure by putting it in a vacuum bag. But usually penetration is based on the the actual strength of the brine you're using which is crucial. So if you're going to add water to it like with maple series that's going to reduce the Brian theoretical Brian Strang, and then on certain number of days for penetration, a certain number of inches into the meat. And it also is going to depend on the particular fat. The fat quantity in your piece of meat versus the lean. Do you have any anything on that, Harold?

No, that's, that's about all I could come up with. There are charts in books. And and, as you say, days per inch guidelines. And that's, that's really the place to go.

And then lastly, he's just ordered a piece of equipment that allow him to try Suvi cooking at home. Congratulations. Would would he be better cooking the pork belly this way after curing or not? If so, is there anything you should look out for using this method? Okay, I happen to love pork belly cure, cooked severe, in which case you choose the temperature you want to cook in general, I would do something below 65 Something like 6360 to 63, even as low as 60. It's going to take that Celsius. So 140 And up in that range. It's going to take a long time, like like three days to three days to get to tended where you want and then crisp up the skin. And I think he asked later she leaves the rind on I would, wouldn't you? Yes, yes, definitely. I would leave the Ryan on and then I wouldn't trim it at all I would crisp the skin up and serve it because that's the that's the best part. Once it's crisp. Leave it on forever is what I would do. Yeah. No it off. Yeah, it's gonna sound a little gross, we might want to trim away the areas where the teats are just because they don't, they don't fit the pan as well. The crucial thing when cooking a pork belly for later cooking is to compress it a little bit before you do so that you get a nice flat surface to pan the skin on to make it nice and crunchy. The other thing I've noticed and Harold, I think we've talked about this before is that when you have the pork belly isn't one specific muscle, it's a group of muscles. And some of them the ones that are the streaky portion and a streaky bacon, let's say they, they respond very well to cooking for a long time on the order of several days. There's one muscle that runs through the pork belly in that that you can really see in the cut that's called in Chinese five fingers or five flour, wherever it is pork. One of those muscles doesn't respond very well to long cooking and gets mushy and, and kind of tastes kind of dry. And so it's a muscle that looks a little oval as you cut through the pork belly. And I would take it out, you know and cook that some other way if you had that experience with pork belly or if you know Yeah,

I mean, in no matter who's made it. Yeah, if that muscle is in there, then then it's just different from the others. Kind of like the shoulder there's so many different muscles that some of them are just wonderful and others are less so

right I would say yeah, I would say different and worse. All right. And with that listen, if anyone's out there you have one more chance to call in 718 We're gonna go to our second commercial break call on 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues.

Watching Welcome back to cookie issues. 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Our producer Jack was pumping up the hall notes this particular song because he thinks it's nice rainy day weather which it is here in Brooklyn rainy. I'll say one last time we have a couple more days to go to mow fat.eventbrite.com to purchase tickets for the museum fundraiser. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm doing at the at the end of the show. But right now let's get back we have Harold McGee on the phone. Hey, would you consider the next time you're in town on a Tuesday to do the show live here at the studio? Yeah, I'd love to love to nice night I was I saw. I saw our mutual buddy Nathan Myhrvold this morning, Nathan's doing his book tour he booked out John shores restaurant in the morning and they cook some of the some of the dishes from his cook book and he might be a phoning guests at some point which will be fun just pushing you know we have some some good some good guests you know coming like apparently grant aid gets is going to is going to be on the show sometime in in May I think I think I guess to push the opening of the new place or what I don't know I don't know I just I heard from from his publicist anyways, this is what's going on and cooking issues land. All right. Now we have a question for you from Tom M. My question for Mr. McGee is does extended brining denature the enzymes in beef responsible for tenderizing it I wish to have a tender corned beef brisket. And I've considered cooking it Suvi for 131 for 12 to 24 hours, shocking in an ice bath and only then brining it. But if Brian does not denature, the tenderizing enzymes, then I might as well Brian it for a couple of days, then do 131 cvwd followed by low temperature smoking and only then do a high temperature cvwd to get to college in transforming temperatures for the appropriate length of time. Am I making things too complicated? And can I achieve it in a simpler manner? Well, I will just I will say two things before I hand it off to you, Harold, one, you don't want to shock, you'd never want to shock a protein like that after it comes out of the out of the bath. Because if you do, you're you're basically going to prevent the meat from reabsorbing some of the juices that have been expelled during the cooking and even at 131, you're going to get juices expelled. So you're not going to you're not going to want to do that. I'm also going to say that I think that 130 one's a little low for brisket might want to look it's people do it all the time, very rare, long, long cooking like this. But I find that people, if they're expecting a cut of meat that is meant to be a little higher in temperature, it's better to go a little higher in temperature. But with that, let me hand it off to you.

Yeah, I'd be interested to see what that's like 131 brisket, but I have a feeling I'm going to I prefer it at a higher temperature. And then, on the issue of brining denaturing the enzymes, you know that I've actually never thought of that I know, in pretty good detail what's happening to the fiber proteins during writing. And that's the the major effect of 10 tenderizing effect of a Brian on meats is that it kind of unknit the muscle fibers and makes them easier to cut through. I've never thought about whether the the salt conditions are going to change the activity of the of the enzymes that do to some extent break down the collagen and the the fiber proteins. And so that's something I'm gonna go look up when we're all done. I have no idea. But but as a general principle, you want to do the brining before the cooking not after the Brian is only going to have its tenderizing moistening effects, if you do it while the meat is raw. Right. And

also you can't cure a cooked meat, right? I mean, corned beef is cured somewhat, so it's not going to be a cure cooked meat. Can you?

Again, kind of an interesting, counterintuitive sort of thing. I think probably Yeah, what's gonna happen is that you will desiccate it. But but the the meat is, is cooked, it's done. And anything you do to it with salt afterwards, it's just going to dry it out and make it salty.

Right, right. Yeah, it's interesting. I've never even thought about trying to bring something out to it. But I mean, corned beef, typically, you'd add some amount of nitrate to it, wouldn't you? I mean, it's pink usually. Right. So it's been, it's been painted definitely won't pink out, you're gonna have it look great. Well, you want it these temperatures at 131. I can't do the math in my head. But that's somewhere in the mid 50s. Right? 130 Somewhere in the mid 50 Celsius. And you know, we do our short ribs a lot in that range, but find that people prefer them up closer to 140 between 140 and a little over. But I definitely don't think you need to go through like a million different steps. I think it's going to probably affect it. You know, like the more steps the more chance for things to going wrong things to dry out things their problems. What do you think?

No, I agree. And if there's a straightforward way to do it, it's always almost always the best way to do it.

All right. So in the most of the questions that have come in, so good, we have at least thing for five minutes we can what are you working on?

I've actually been taking a little bit of a hiatus for a variety of reasons and have not cooked Anything serious in in like a month. So, but Spring is coming, and I'm sure that's going to change fast. One thing I'm going to do this coming weekend that I'm looking forward to is head off to Spain for a last meal at elBulli

it's for real gonna be the last it's like real deal last now.

Yeah, apparently, July 30, I think is the dates now the restaurant will close as a restaurant and then reopened in the next day or two as a think tank.

So who are you going with?